


marked for sorrow

by antiheroic



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, M/M, anne carson's oresteia is the only valid oresteia, crowliphale has been sending me, we don't talk about the 14th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 04:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19996111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiheroic/pseuds/antiheroic
Summary: 1348. Not even halfway through the 14th century and Crowley was ready to set fire to the whole thing, start over on some far-flung star where humans didn't exist and thereby couldn't possibly die by the hundreds of thousands.





	marked for sorrow

1348\. Not even halfway through the 14th century and Crowley was ready to set fire to the whole thing, start over on some far-flung star where humans didn't exist and thereby couldn't possibly die by the hundreds of thousands. 

But then, he thought morosely, staring into his tankard, he wasn't sure that wine had been invented in Andromeda just yet. 

He drained the last of it and let his head _thunk_ to the counter with a pitiful moan. 

"Awful business," came a soft voice from his right. Crowley turned his head to look at Aziraphale, somehow impeccable, swathed in his hideous beige and tartan. Crowley rested his cheek against the cool, vaguely sticky wood. "I don't suppose—" 

"It wasn't _me,"_ Crowley snapped. 

Aziraphale blinked. "I didn't think it was, dear boy," he said, not ungently. 

Crowley pushed himself vaguely upright and affixed his tankard with a glare, whereupon it made itself full again and produced a brother for the angel. They drank in silence. 

"I can't do this," Crowley said viciously, three mugs later. "I can't—I can't _do_ this, 'Zira." He hiccuped. "Wass—wh's the fuckin' _point_ ? And _don't,_ " he jabbed a finger into the angel's chest, "tell me it's _ineffable._ 's just _trash."_

Aziraphale sighed. The exhalation blew bubbles in his wine. "I don't know," he said. He was looking at Crowley, through Crowley, his gaze vacant and haunted. "I don't know."

He stood abruptly, lightly tugging on Crowley's elbow. "Come, dear. Let's get you a room."

"Trying to tempt me, angel?" Crowley tried for a solicitous smirk, but succeeded only in a wavering twist of his lips that made him look as if he were barely holding back tears. He reached for his mug and cradled it to his chest while Aziraphale nudged him off his stool. 

"Don't be uncouth," Aziraphale said mildly, pushing Crowley's pliant form towards the stairs. "It's quite boring."

"Go— Sat— _sssomeone_ forbid I _bore_ you," Crowley hissed, though he lacked a certain bite, considering he was being gently maneuvered up a narrow stairway. Aziraphale's small, elegantly manicured hands steadied him by the shoulders with a firm strength that surprised them both. Perhaps it shouldn't have, all swords considered. 

Aziraphale let them in to a small bedroom, largely clean, and led Crowley forward until he stumbled quite drunkenly and fell onto the bed. Somehow Aziraphale managed to rescue the cup of wine before it spilled and cover Crowley with the thin cotton blanket, though it must have taken a small miracle. 

"Can't you _do_ anything?" Crowley mumbled into his pillow, so quietly that not a soul other than Aziraphale, who was perched on the side of the bed and leaning over to examine a rough patch of skin on the back of Crowley's neck, could have heard. 

"You know I can't, dear boy." He lifted the demon's sunglasses away and placed them on the rickety wooden nightstand. "Pestilence will have their way." Aziraphale smiled, wry and humorless. "Human problems require human solutions."

"You're awfully calm about all this," Crowley muttered. 

Aziraphale was quiet. He was quiet for so long that Crowley began to doze off, drink and exhaustion conspiring to pull him under. 

"I tried. I can't take care of them," he said eventually. "But I can take care of you."

Crowley made a vague noise and stirred, putting forth just enough effort to turn his head so he could glare at Aziraphale, his amber eyes like twin dying suns. " _Why_?" he said wretchedly. "It's rotten work."

"Not to me." Aziraphale's voice was so soft and so firm that Crowley thought for a moment that he was dreaming of another time, another universe, in which Aziraphale was the ironclad guardian Heaven had intended him to be.

But this was not then and there; it was here and now, and Aziraphale was smoothing Crowley's hair back away from his face. The demon's eyes closed, and Sleep oozed in to claim her prey.

"Not if it's you," Aziraphale said, and there he stayed until Crowley woke to the light of the noontime sun blazing through the tavern's windows, and then he was gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> the google doc in which i originally wrote this is titled THANKS ANNE CARSON 
> 
> come yell abt good omens w me @antiheroic on tumblr, @abbmasterpro on twitter


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